monkeyinabox: look here....or you could just go through life and be happy anyway

A Frakkin Great Spring Break With PVC Pipe, Butte's And Photo Shoots

03.30.2009

A serious lack of postings since my last entry (I know), but that hasn't meant there was a serious lack of things going on for the monkey. I have to admit that the video previously posted reached a far greater audience than I originally expected (Facebookers and blog readers). At The Teacher's school another teacher played it for her entire class, and it was passed around to more family members and relatives than I would have imagined. Certainly a nice way to get the news announced.

The Teacher was ready for her Spring Break and made the trip over to monkey headquarters. While we didn't have any huge travel plans for this week (primarily due to the fact that The Architect didn't have Spring Break off), it didn't mean that we didn't have plenty of interesting things lined up. Of course your interest in these things might not be as great as mine were.

With Spring officially here, that meant that the weather would continue to be cold and nasty. Perfect for a hike up Lava Butte two Sunday's ago. The day started out wet with some snow-flurries (windy too) and by mid-afternoon it was only windy, so what the heck? I was inspired by a recent article in The Bulletin about hiking the alternative to Pilot Butte. Seriously, it had been a long time since I had been at the top of the butte that I've driven by many times.

There was an interesting mix of weather on the hike up the road. The south-eastern portion was mostly pleasant with the north-western portion being snowy and windy as hell. Spring in Central Oregon: gotta love it. We pushed on and made it to the top. It was probably 40 or so out with a wind chill of 10. Yes, the wind sucked, or blew (which probably makes more sense).

On a totally different subject, the newer series of Battlestar Galactica concluded with it's final episode. When the series was first announced, I had doubts. However, I was quickly won over and as the show moved along, the theme "all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again" was brought into the story line, which if anything brought the series to an epic level with the story line. If you missed out on this show, simply because you thought it was geeky science fiction, give it a chance. You won't be let down.

I had my first taste of this series back in December of 2003. I watched the series on the computer, then on the tv, then started it over a few times (I watched it before, and later watched it again). Sure, there were gaps in time with the writers strike and long hiatuses in between seasons, but finally after five and a half years, it was over. The Teacher had a much different experience with an accelerated DVD watching schedule in where she watched the entire series in three months.

The week also featured a couple of my more ambitious photo shoots at home. One is for the Cascade Camera Club and the other one is slightly top secret until WE release it. Just to make it extra juicy, there was PVC pipe involved, props, lighting and everything that could be used to make the photo magic happen. And....it happened. Sure, if you have a studio and studio lighting, this sort of thing might be a piece of cake, but the DIY approach was used in both projects and I think the results met my expectations.